The FAI gave assurances that Waterford should be eligible for Europe and there was no indication there would be a problem till about 10 days ago so they should compensate Waterford for the loss of the UEFA money. The club were aware of the 3 year rule but were told they should be exempt from it. That was clearly wrong and Waterford are paying the price for it.
If there is a court case about this I'm sure we will find out more about what happened.

Last time I checked it was UEFA who approve eligibility for European Competitions and not the FAI, but hey lets deflect the blame for all this away from this unfortunate multi millionaire businessman that already owns a professional EFL club who both he and his expensive UK legal team were all too ignorant to conduct due diligence (a quick google search) on UEFA European Club Licensing two and half years ago when he formed a new professional football club entity that would have saved all of this unfortunate hassle

Here is a quote from February from Fran Gavin printed in this week's Waterford Today.'We don't see any issues that would prohibit them from getting a licence'.
If something changed in the meantime such as finding the club did not clear all debts from the previous regime that should be made public.

Fran Gavin is hardly going to come out and say "Waterford should be grand - I know they're not eligible but we're going to find a fudge around that, don't worry"

What "changed in the meantime" appears to have been that the person who was fudging things got caught spending money on stuff he really shouldn't have been and got kicked out of office, so was unable to fudge things any more.

All the visible facts tie in with this idea that Waterford weren't eligible but Delaney told Power he would bend the rules, and now that he's gone, the rules can't be bent. It's really unfortunate for Waterford fans - but surely there has to be some acknowledgement of this fact, and of what it implies?

Originally Posted by trevy

My point is it should never have got to this stage less than 2 months before the draw.

It should never have been anything other than knowing that Waterford would be denied a licence for 3 years so never been an issue never mind new news 2 months befor the draw. I can understand the ire with the FAI but they were going to cheat on Waterford's and Lee Powers behalf but were stopped. Power is bound to have enquired with the FAI on criteria for Europe, his case would be to admit that he was told the FAI would break the rules somehow and get them in. The FAI could easily have suggested that the right thing be done and clear any legacy debt of Waterford United or Euopean licence would be an issue. This would also all seem to me that Waterford United no longer exist in any form. Waterford FC is a phoenix club starting from scratch. Power nearly fooled people in the 'simple name change' stunt. Im sure the old clubs roll of honour can be purchased from someone down the line...

Lovers of Bert Kassies (and if you're not a lover of Bert what's wrong with you?) will be pleased to see he's got a 2019-20 Europa League seeding page up and running as we move towards knowing all the qualifiers. You already have Bert's page bookmarked of course, but here's the link